Excerpt from danah boyd‘s post:
“let’s define our terms: what is ‘social networking technology’?”

In writing Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship, Nicole Ellison and I wrote many iterations of the definition of the term “social network sites” and why we chose to use this instead of “social networking sites.” For a good 20 versions, we had included this statement:

“Because the term ‘networking’ emphasizes relationship initiation, often with strangers, it can and has been expanded to refer to any site that allows people to communicate with people that they do not know, including dating sites, chatrooms, community sites, and bulletin boards.

danah’s definition is a great reminder of the basic foundation that social networks are built upon – relationships. I’ve been gone most of the month due to an exhaustive and humbling job hunt, which led me to many interesting conversations regarding social media in its many incarnations. The most exhilarating and recent discuss simply revolved around how to define social networking to an audience of individuals unfamiliar with its purpose and unable to define it free from the associated technological clutter.

Furthermore, danah’s definition articulates everything that I am unable to convey, but I am also a rather visual person – and have found that a visual reference point has been useful when trying to define something that has so many opinionated definitions. What I’ve come to is that social networks are wonderfully analogues with Tinker Toys.

You know those wooden toys that consist of primarily wooden circles and sticks that enable you to build interconnected spokes thus resulting in one large web of spokes that overlap and interact. Sound familiar? It’s a somewhat elementary depiction, but it does offer a visual reference point that highlights the nuts and bolts. A skeleton of sorts. Its strips away the glitz, glamor and applications that dilute the heart and soul of its purpose. Plus it’s enables me to explain social networking to both my nephew (4) and my mother (47) all in the same sitting.